The Quest

     The Quest. This word is capitalized because it shows that it possesses major significance. Now I must first do the ritual summarizing of the chapter that was read just so that you lovely people reading this blog can have some sort of inclining of a clue of what I am talking about. The first chapter of How to read Literature like a Professor, details a scenario, or a hypothetical situation. There is a young man that is sent to the store to buy something that an adult told him to buy, being a respectable "good" kid, he follows direction. Then he is faced with a dilemma, he sees the girl of his dreams talking to his "arch nemesis" the "cool guy" on his super hot rod sports car. He buys the bread but comes to the epiphany that he has to do something major to win the attention, heart, love, or whatever "good guys" typically want to win from the girl of their dreams. The major thing that he decides to do is join the Marines, even though he isn't old enough. We have all seen this before, its the typical romantic movie or "chick flick", that rolls out every other 3 months. The same story that is told over and over and over again, but continues to jerk tears from our teenage souls.


Even though we see this everyday on the silver screen, the structure of this story is the structure that is used in our everyday lives. It is called the Quest. Now most of us know what a quest is, but when asked what are the specific parts of a Quest 4 out of 10 may know the answer. To be honest I didn't know that there were specific parts to a Quest. A Quest was just...well...a Quest. Here are the 5 parts of a Quest:

1. A Quester
2. A place to go
3. a stated reason to go there
4. challenges and trials en route
5. a real reason to go there

When I saw that this were the characteristics there was one thing that immediately popped into my head: Life. Most of us know that saying that "life is a journey," well in my opinion that also means that life is a Quest. Here think about it using the specifics.

1. You are the Quester
2. UP (a little abstract I know)
3. I want to be "successful" (whatever that means)
4. Money, greed, strife, hunger, education, anger, etc.
5. I want to gain society's meaning of happiness and wealth and prosperity ( I cant help it, its been engrained in my brain and DNA)

So as I said this example was a little abstract but it still fits. This was a very interesting 1st chapter. And I will definitely be looking for this Quest tactic in everything.